Cricketers off on a long, tiring run

The Australian cricket team is about to embark on the most intensive two-year period undertaken by an international side, with 36 Tests and about 90 one-day matches scheduled between now and the end of 2005.

Starting with next week's Test against Zimbabwe in Perth, the gruelling schedule will dictate that the team plays as much as nine months, or 270 days of cricket, over two years, with no continuous break being longer than two months. The schedule includes two one-day tournaments in Sharjah, which are yet to be confirmed, as well as a potential five-match one-day series to be played in Scotland in the lead-up to next year's International Cricket Council Champions Trophy in England.

The volume of cricket being played, particularly one-day matches, became the subject of an ICC review after chief executive Malcolm Speed said earlier this year that the game had almost reached saturation point.

Australian Cricketers' Association chief executive Tim May said Australia's success worked as a double-edged sword and the hectic schedules were unlikely to be changed unless the ICC review, to be completed next year, recommended it.

"It's basically your 'blue ribbon' or the most followed teams who have the most punishing schedules," May said. "There are teams that don't play enough cricket, simple as that.

"But the teams that can generate revenue etc, it seems that their quality has been compromised with the quantity of cricket.

"I mean, they (the Australian players) have a nine-week break until September 2005.

"Our position is that we want to preserve our players so that they're able to play to the best of their ability, so that the Australian cricket team is playing to their full potential and the cricket spectators can see a quality product rather than a quantity product."

May said the amount of one-day cricket, in particular, had to be closely monitored, with cricket's anti-corruption unit having pinpointed meaningless one-day matches as the ideal breeding ground for match-fixing and corruption.

The number of limited-overs matches played has increased steadily in recent years, with Australia's one-day program going from nine over a two-year period 30 years ago to a staggering 90 over the next two years.

Australian one-day captain Ricky Ponting and his deputy Adam Gilchrist are among the disgruntled players who have spoken out against the amount of one-day cricket being played, although three countries, including Pakistan and Zimbabwe, said at last year's captains' conference that they were not playing enough cricket.

Former Australian batsman Geoff Marsh, now the coach of Zimbabwe, said too great a burden was now being placed on players, particularly from teams such as Australia and India. "We had a lot of time off in those days (when I played) and it has got busier and busier as the years have gone on," Marsh said. "Definitely, you could have a good three or four months off during the winter, but players, this year for example, had to go and play Bangladesh.

"That's only going to get bigger now with the success of playing cricket in Darwin and in Cairns . . . to say whether it's too much or it's OK, I'd have to say it's a lot of cricket. To expect your best XI to play in all those games is asking a lot.

"I honestly think it's something we've got to watch more carefully that we're not playing too much cricket."